Saturday, January 5, 2013

Book Club Meeting - Unbroken

Mileage: 2807

We had a great book club meeting on Saturday. We had lunch at Sushiya Japanese restaurant in San Luis Obispo. The food and conversation was wonderful. The restaurant has a cozy atmosphere, we didn't have any sushi, but they are known for delicious and fresh sushi. I had the Teriyaki salmon and it was delicious, I loved the soup, salad and the rice, too.


One popular item they offer is the the rainbow roll, with a California roll interior, is topped with shrimp, tuna, yellowtail and red snapper. They also have  traditional beef teriyaki, pork ton katsu and sesame chicken dishes with sushi, soup, salad and rice, most items were reasonably priced.






The book we read was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.